Never mind. This is beginning to south like too much of a damn edge case
for it to be of language-wide relevance.
Pretend this discussion never happened.
On 09/12/2015 5:40 PM, "Jordan Harband" <ljharb at gmail.com> wrote:
> Can you not put each class in its own module, and simply require, by name,
> the one you want?
>> On Tue, Dec 8, 2015 at 10:19 PM, John Gardner <gardnerjohng at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>>> Only at top-level. This issue actually surfaced when I realised I had no
>> way to indirectly access classes by name... and for some reason, neither
>> the global object nor the eval hack were returning anything. It worked fine
>> for simple variables, so I wondered if that was an intentional side-effect
>> of classes in ECMAScript.
>>>> (Of course, if not, it may actually be an issue with V8's
>> implementation...)
>> On 09/12/2015 5:05 PM, "Bradley Meck" <bradley.meck at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>> Are you putting hundreds of classes into a single scope?
>>>>>> On Tue, Dec 8, 2015 at 11:56 PM, John Gardner <gardnerjohng at gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>>>>> Trouble is, if one has literally hundreds of classes or functions that
>>>> need to be matched, they'd rather not pool them all into one massive object
>>>> literal for the sake of easier mapping. DRY principle fully relevant.
>>>>>>>> Also, yes, while it would be a pain for static type analysis, it
>>>> wouldn't necessarily be the same as `eval`. Eval executes arbitrary code,
>>>> whereas the indirect references would only point to modifiers only:
>>>>>>>> var className = \"doSomethingSinister(/etc/passwd/);"
>>>>>>>> That line would literally be looking for a property in the current
>>>> scope that'd be named this:
>>>>>>>> global["doSomethingSinister(/etc/passwd/);"]
>>>> window["doSomethingSinister(/etc/passwd/);"]
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> On 9 December 2015 at 16:09, Frankie Bagnardi <f.bagnardi at gmail.com>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>>>> This is a common situation, but one easily solved by object literals.
>>>>> Reflecting on the scope is confusing and would hurt tooling (it's
>>>>> essentially eval).
>>>>>>>>>> ```js
>>>>> var mapping = {Polygon: Polygon};
>>>>> var meshClass = mapping[ajaxData.className];
>>>>> ```
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> On Tue, Dec 8, 2015 at 9:53 PM, John Gardner <gardnerjohng at gmail.com>
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>>>>>> ECMAScript currently offers no clean way to "dereference" a variable
>>>>>> in the current scope. For instance, assume an author wishes to obtain a
>>>>>> reference to a class using a variable that holds its name:
>>>>>>>>>>>> class Paintbrush{ }
>>>>>>>>>>>> let className = "Paintbrush";
>>>>>>>>>>>> // Would only work in browsers, not NodeJS
>>>>>> console.log( window[className] );
>>>>>>>>>>>> // Doesn't even work in NodeJS
>>>>>> console.log( global[className] || this[className] );
>>>>>>>>>>>> A hacky workaround is to create an anonymous function that simply
>>>>>> returns a reference to the named variable:
>>>>>>>>>>>> function dereference(name){
>>>>>> return new Function([], "return " + name)();
>>>>>> }
>>>>>> dereference("Paintbrush") === Paintbrush; // true
>>>>>>>>>>>> This isn't an elegant solution, nor a preferable one. Another
>>>>>> approach might be to leverage `eval`, which opens up the obvious issues of
>>>>>> performance and security.
>>>>>>>>>>>> Having a way of indirectly referencing another variable would fix
>>>>>> this:
>>>>>>>>>>>> class Paintbrush{ }
>>>>>>>>>>>> let className = "Paintbrush";
>>>>>>>>>>>> let classReference = \className;
>>>>>> console.log(classReference === Paintbrush); // true
>>>>>>>>>>>> Sticking a backslash before a bareword identifier creates a reference
>>>>>> to an object whose name matches the identifier's string value. If no such
>>>>>> object exists in the current scope, it simply returns `undefined`.
>>>>>>>>>>>> I can't see this being used in everyday programs, but it would
>>>>>> facilitate Ajax programming considerably, where classes or functions can
>>>>>> only be specified by name:
>>>>>>>>>>>> {"className":"Polygon", "vertices": [[0,0]...] }
>>>>>>>>>>>> let meshClass = \ajaxData.className;
>>>>>> if(meshClass instanceof Mesh){
>>>>>> new meshClass(ajaxData.vertices);
>>>>>> }
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